


Honourable Lady

by themusketeerofrohan



Series: First Impressions [2]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Honour, Interesting tense, Loss of Trust, Love, Mental turmoil, Pacific Rim - Freeform, Pacific Rim AU, Pan Atlantic Defense Corps, Trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-09
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-15 03:59:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1290508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themusketeerofrohan/pseuds/themusketeerofrohan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes trust to pilot a Jaeger. Not love, not familial bonds, not what anyone assumes. The Bridge is built on trust, and Athos just doesn't trust her anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honourable Lady

**Author's Note:**

> Well this took a while to get out, I'm sorry. I'm planning two more in this series with another pilot pair, and one with the Marshalls. Then I'm hoping to do The Big One, with all the pilots, all the angst in a Musketeers vs Kaiju longer multi-chapter fic. That's the plan, ha!
> 
> Big thanks go to miss-aramis for her brilliant and helpful beta-ing, and to Anna for her support and superior English :P
> 
> Thanks for all the kudos, it's awesome! Comments are always nice to read.

 

They’re the best of the best. More kills than any other jaeger in their Shatterdome, more than most in the Pan Atlantic Defense Corps. They’re known around the world as the pair that brought down the first Kaiju to hit France, the brave duo who operate in near complete silence so that they can tune into the slightest change in thought of their partner.

If only the press knew that the silence was an absence of feeling and a lack of things to say. That the bravery and recklessness is because he and she don’t care anymore whether they survive each encounter. He is so distinct from her now in mind and in trust that it comes as a surprise to him every time the neural bridge is successful.

He turns away from the clippings on the wall, from the smiles and the shining new jaeger and the arms around each other. It had been a romantic story that the media had quickly latched onto. The young, handsome Comte de la Fere renouncing his title to pilot jaegers with his beautiful, wild wife. Newly married, they’d aced the compatibility tests (a sign of their true love, the papers rejoiced) and were in their jaeger for training in record time. The certificates for passing out of the Academy still hung on the wall, slightly faded by the sun.

\--+--

Those had been happy times, he remembers absently. Rolling out of bed late, training all morning, the golden afternoons when they’d fight in the Kwoon and every session would end with them tangled up in each other, her dark hair teased out of its plait curtaining their kisses. They’d be giddy with the promise of it all, the adrenaline, of living each day like it was their last (though they didn’t really believe that. When you’re young, you are invincible and death will come in order of age, or goodness of heart. And they were young, and they were fighting the good fight, so there was no chance of death for them yet.) If only that were true.

When the first Kaiju hit France, it wasn’t a shock. The attacks had become more frequent, and the Kaiju had been expanding their range from the original attack in Rio de Janiero. The massacre at Lagos had followed, then Miami, Gibraltar, New York, Reykjavik, Santander. It took too long for the first Jaegers to roll off the production line. France threw funds into the Jaeger Academy to find the pair that would pilot their first Jaeger against the monsters closing in. They’d passed out of training so quickly because of their talent, yes, but also because time was a commodity no one was trading in anymore.

They’d pushed through the grey waters of the Atlantic, the winds of the Bay tugging the mass of their Lady from side to side. He remembers his heart beating a mile a minute, but feeling the calmness of her inside his head, focusing him on the task in hand.

They were too late to save the coastal towns where the Kaiju, codename Malin, had made landfall, passing them as they burn. The creature was headed for Bordeaux, the wide estuary of the river making its passage simple. He remembers the river, bluer than the sky above them, the lurid neon of Kaiju Blue. He could feel her disgust at the waste this region will be for a long time after, and he had sympathised but urged her to focus on the large mass looming ahead of them. Malin was a Category III, average size according to the statistics being thrown at them. By the time they took it down, half of Bordeaux is destroyed and the rest contaminated for the foreseeable future. It had been a hollow victory.

\--+--

They faced three more Kaiju over the next few years, beating each one, each time taking blows that steadily drained the spark from his eyes and the bearing from her shoulders. It is then, he thinks, that they lose the optimism they’d retained through the testing and the training. And then they began to question each other, because neither are the person they fell in love with anymore.

The last Kaiju they fought was a Cat III in the Dover Strait, and although the Brits say they have it covered, the Brest Shatterdome sends out their top jaeger anyway: they weren’t taking any chances with Calais. He was ready in the pod as she walked in, and nods to her. She didn’t nod back.

He frowned but marked it down on the lengthening list of things not quite right with their relationship and prepares for the neural handshake, eyes closed. He waits, and the Drift rushes over him like a wall of water.

When he woke up, he didn’t call for her, but the orderly brought her anyway. They had lain next to each other on their hospital beds in complete silence.

She didn’t make any attempt to apologise for the images that ran through his mind on repeat.

_It’s a darkened room, with a pinkish hue. Their bedroom. Through her eyes, he sees her turn towards a figure, a man. Not him. An embrace, hungry and fierce, then the world turns on its side as they fall into bed and he sees, he feels, what happens next through the Drift._

He had emerged from the memory and swallowed down the bile that rose in his throat.

“What did I do wrong?”

His voice had been quiet and brittle, and he and it would have broken if he’d said anymore.

“You weren’t enough.”

Her reply is brisk, matter-of-fact, and cuts him to the core.

\--+--

They’ve tried Drifting since then, since their bodies recovered from their jaeger nearly destroying itself, the Shatterdome and her pilots as the neural bridge shattered. Minds take longer to heal. And his hasn’t.

The Kaiju have attacked increasingly as the years have passed. And he and she have sat there as the sirens have sounded, useless to the defenceless people of France as a result of his inability to exorcise the demon from his brain, and trust her again. He wants to do the honourable thing, protect the country he loves, but every time he steps into a Pons pod and closes his eyes, the memory of skin on skin, the murmurs, the sound... it provokes a visceral reaction. Trial suspended. Participant unable to continue. Test unable to continue under safety grounds. The reports range across that theme.

Athos doesn’t turn as the door to their room opens and Anne steps in. She doesn’t acknowledge him, aching head in hands as he finishes reliving the memory.

“Are you coming? They’ve called another Drifting test.”

“No.”

Their voices are like shrapnel, scattering blindly into each other, digging deeper under the skin.

“They’ll take her away from us if we can’t sort this out, Athos.”

Her regal tone needles him, and he turns his head to look at her.

“I don’t think I care, milady. She deserves better than us.”

“We’re the best pilots France had, I think she’s happy enough with that.”

“Honourable Lady deserves people who can live up to her name, and actually manage to trust each other enough to Drift. And we don’t anymore, Anne. I don’t.”

She is indifferent to this outburst which burns his mouth with the acrid truth of it all.

And she’s gone. Athos puts his head back in his hands. It takes a bottle of vodka for the accusing eyes of the past on the wall to blur into darkness, and to forget what kind of man he has become.

**Author's Note:**

> Malin- French for malignant


End file.
